Greedy Goblin

Monday, July 30, 2012

PvE-ers and traders must contribute like PvP-ers!

On Friday I wrote that in order to keep your space you must make enough effort (time spent PvPing, building defensive installations, grinding for PvP ships, supercap fleet). "Enough" is defined by your neighbors. If they make more effort, your space will be overrun. Their decision to spend so much is not necessarily ISK-rational. They might want space because it's the way of "winning the game" or they simply consider some of the related activities "fun". This can push the defense cost of sov above the time many people can spend on the game, forcing them to convert PLEX to cut PvE time or leave sov-null completely.

The most common sight in the marketplace is the manufacturer who sells below material cost. When asked why, his answer is "I farmed the mats myself, so they are free". Something similar can be seen in nullsec sov: the PvP-ers fight for the space "for fun", so they don't book their hours. However failing too book doesn't mean zero cost. We know very well that the tritanium worth the same just because someone had fun mining it.

Playing 1.5 hours/day isn't extensive at all. It's about 2-3 fleet ops and a roam a week. It's still 45 hours a month. Calculating with highsec PvE 30M/hour, it is 1.35B ISK. Just because he had fun and did it as a volunteer it worth the same. The PvP-er donates about 1-1.5B ISK/month to his alliance in time spent fighting. What does a PvE player donate to his alliance? Normally, nothing! Just because you manufacture, mine or rat up things that you sell to PvP-ers, you provided nothing for the alliance. You made the life of the members easier, true, but it is their personal profit and contributed zero to home defense.

If you don't want to contribute to fighting for sov, you have no place in sov-null. The alliances who kick out carebears are completely right. They are using space they don't contribute defending. However it's largely sub-optimal solution. Look at this TEST balance sheet: Sov fees + fuel costs + offices = 131B. Income: 191B. That means they have 60B left for paying their members to do something boring or reimbursing fleet. Hell, I could pay that alone! Now let's see how much they can spend on one ship if they want an 1000-men fleet? 60M. This is not a tight budget. This is poverty. My L3-running girlfriend has bigger ship reimbursement fund for herself than TEST for one pilot. Goons fare better, they have about 300B for reimbursements. Amazing, they can replace a whole Maelstrom fleet! We are talking about OTEC member "OMG they're so rich" alliances. Now imagine a random alliance without moongoo.

If an PvP-er donates 1B/month to his alliance, a 10K alliance should have 10T/month! Yet TEST live on 0.2T, Goons on 0.75T, because PvP time can't be converted to ships. The reason why alliances are so desperately poor is exactly the "I farmed for free" attitude. In the light of the opportunity cost the PvP-ers pay, the solution is obvious: get PvE players who provide the same value, but not in PvP time but ISK! PvE players are just as valuable at PvP players, but we were not utilized at all. No one asked us to provide money because it seemed unfair, while it's absolutely not! A PvP-er provides around 1B/month in time, PvE-ers should provide 1B/month in ISK. That's equal and fair! Since we like PvE, manufacturing, mining, trading, we could contribute while having fun, just like PvP-ers.

The alliance that recognizes the value of ISK and accepts members to pay their dues not just with PvP hours but by donating ISK will see an insane power multiplier. Imagine just 1000 PvE players who donate just 1B/month. That's 1T/month. Enough to keep an 1000-men tracking-dread + Maelstrom + spider carrier fleet. Better than Drakes, right?

For those willing to pay 1B/month to be part of reshaping nullsec, the corp "Goblinworks" is created. Since we don't have sov yet, please join only with an alt to the corp. It's currently just a list of players to offer in the negotiations, to show the alliance how many people are willing to contribute via ISK. At the end of the negotiations they will probably ask for API keys of your nullsec accounts, so trolls who join to skew the numbers will be filtered out. Obviously no payments asked until we get in an alliance.

No more plan Bs! I clearly see my null-sec path: forming the corp that will be the industrial backbone of a nullsec alliance. It won't be a fast thing since average guy has the attitude of "lol we r l33t we need no spacejews". I don't know who will recognize the truth first. Goons/TEST who are not poisoned by l33t culture and threatened by upcoming Tech changes? Or one of the former l33ts who were beaten back to highsec (NPC-null) by Goons? The time of traders and pro-PvE-ers is coming. As soon as an alliance recognizes the real value of ISK, it will be unstoppable. So if you are fed up with flying cheap crap in sov fleets because your alliance is dirt-poor, send the link of this post to your leaders.

The things we want from the alliance for the 1B/month:

We are full members, not renters. The alliance must make it clear to PvP-ers that we equally contribute by keeping them in ships.

We must be given opportunity to fly with the fleet when we want to. Most of the PvE players are not pure PvE players, they want to PvP sometimes. Just like the PvP players rat sometimes. Of course this case the members must do as the FC says, be on comms and fly something the doctrine accepts. Troublemakers can be banned from the fleet by the FC.

However we are free to not join fleets when we don't want to. By the 1B payment, we did our part. Obviously most of us will not miss an important battle. After all who wouldn't like to be there in the 1K+ battles?

The alliance must be sov holder (or very serious sov-returner) with independent diplomacy (not a pet). A renter or pet doesn't has independent defense that one could contribute to, the money would be wasted.

Being equal members mean equal right to own, build and fly supercapitals.

Who should join?

Those industrialists who want to take part in reshaping the galaxy, win the game.

Those who want to fly a supercap (that needs sov and an alliance where we are proven members)

Those who are fed up with "lol ima l33t ur a carebear" crap and want to see the "l33t" massacred

Those who play enough to use it as a profitable investment: if highsec PvE is 30M/hour, nullsec is 70M/hour and you play more than 25 hours/month, you'll be more rich in null than in high. Though you are probably better off in WH.

Those who want to casually PvP in null and can easily convert 2 PLEX-es for the privilege to PvP when they want and only then.

The time is now! PvE players, traders, null is waiting. Join Goblinworks! Use the recruitment tool search mask as displayed here:

By the way if we could channel the intelligent and hard working PvE players to null, that would hit highsec M&S harder than any deccer corp could.

PS: I made a post about this on the EVE recruitment forums, friendly bumps are welcomed (the author can't bump more than once and there is an insane amount of posts created every day).
Saturday morning report: 119.2B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Sunday morning report: 120.4B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8+0.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Monday morning report: 121.6B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.9 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0+0.1 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

38 comments:

Anonymous
said...

"A PvP-er provides around 1B/month in time, PvE-ers should provide 1B/month in ISK."

This is not true, PvPers contribute MUCH MORE. First the 30 mil/hour in high is newbie income - as you know pretty well any half-decent guy can make more by combining trading and missions, thus making income at least 60 mil / hour

Second, you factor only the time a PvPer plays but not the time he spends in learning PvP skills instead of learning money making skills. You don't calculate the loses that a PvP-er pays from his wallet (not everything is corp reimbursed), you don't calculate the implants lost and clone price in a pod kill etc.

At a bare minimum you should calculate opportynity cost based on price of the 1 hour null income - a Player living in null doing PvE vs a player living in null doing PvP. Based on a very conservative 70 mil/hour you must pay more than 2 bil a month instead of 1 bil. After all you require equal treatment, not just possibility to live there.

"After all who wouldn't like to be there in the 1K+ battles?"

A lot of people that have been into one.

As you have proven, 1 bil a day is reachable by a single player with not much skills. Why would an alliance hire ENTIRE CORP when they could find/appoint/hire/make an alt generating them the same income? All they need is to change their point of view, nothing else. Surely there are 1% people living in null and having the skills and dedication for making money, this translates into 80 ppl in the goons and this translates into 80 x 30 bil / month.

Fundamentally, I do not understand why anyone would rationally pay 1B/month to be a member of a corp who are paying to avoid CTAs (call-to-arms -- "you must PVP or risk getting kicked"). There are a plethora of "RL First, chillin in 0.0" corps that are part of CFC (and I assume the others), you just need to chat up the right people / have the right 'provenance' (PS - E-Uni helps).

I appreciate the change in your tone (the title of your post epitomizes this shift); you seem to be taking more ownership for your playstyle rather than condemning your colleagues in the sandbox. In that light - I understand why YOU would want to pay 1B to get access to safe 0.0 to build super-caps.

...

But I must question anybody who would choose to pay you (your corp) a 1B/month tax instead of making friends, as the "requirement" to play in 0.0. Even the sociopath, incapable of _feeling_ an emotional connection, would rationally choose to con a few corpies into "friendship" than pay a tax. If the "opportunity cost" of "being a social human" is too high, then why wouldn't they form their own arraignment with the alliance just as you did?

Fun fact: Our corp requires our "rockhounds" (the mining/industrial arm of the corporation) to pay 500mil per account per month. the amount tapers off as a person adds accounts to the corp, accounts after 3 are free.

Like you allude to, our pvpers, aren't required to contribute financially but are required to deploy to wherever the corp tells us (currently still delve).

Not every corp/alliance does it quite this way though. I'm not entirely sure how many people you will get join but I wish you luck.

only concern I'd raise would be the lack of mandatory contribution to vital sov defence (if it came to that) If there is a Call To Arms, generally everyone is expected to either participate or log off. (participation may include ensuring the jump bridges are fueled or scouting etc if you don't have combat skills). that would depend on the alliance of course.

I'd be interested (although it would likely be impossible to know accurately) the percentage of people who manage to leach from large alliances without either contributing financially, industrially or with combat. I guess the onus is on the corporations to keep their membership tight.

I don't know much about Eve economics, but what would be the advantage to the PvE player? Is being part of this null-sec alliance something that provides an additional economic benefit, one worth the 1B?

Just because you manufacture, mine or rat up things that you sell to PvP-ers, you provided nothing for the alliance. You made the life of the members easier, true, but it is their personal profit and contributed zero to home defense.

One warm body in a sector is better than none, if for no other reason than sounding the alarm when some hostiles enter Local. And never discount the residual benefits of being able to claim "We have 3000+ members." 3000 battle-tested PvPers are better than 500 + 2500 carebears, of course, but the 500+2500 is better than just 500 PvPers even if the carebears are revenue neutral.

On the surface of things, your plan sounds ridiculous. "Pay 2 PLEX a month, and we will bribe our way into an Alliance to get the same thing (most) real members get for free!" The principal behind the ISK amount is sound - carebears should probably be paying that amount - but I do not see why any rational station trader would go that 2-PLEX route when cheaper alternatives are available. Even if it is paying PLEX for the privilege of avoiding Corp nonsense/expectations, the carebears already in the Corp/Alliance seem to get by just fine.

Pretty clever using such a poisoned gift, though. An Alliance that scoops you up will likely start expecting more from their carebears, forcing them to get better or be forced out as quasi-leechers.

Perhaps I may turn this into a blog post, but it's getting a bit outside my eve experience area: I'm dealing with this in my RL at the moment though, and because I have never run a corporation in eve, it didn't immediately occur to me. How to build a high performing team? I've asked every leadership-type person that I've bumped into, and it all boils down to the hiring process and the culture of the group. i.e. Hire the right people, and foster an attitude of high performance. translated into eve, the only difference is that playtime is voluntary, not a requirement to get paid. but I have a theory that a group of people with common goals, carefully pruned every now and then to remove those that will adversely affect the culture of the group will perform well regardless of whether it is voluntary or not. in fact, past a certain point, everything is voluntary.

just thoughts at the moment... need to make them coherent at some point. you've mentioned yourself that you wouldn't want to run the one-empire if it ever existed. have you considered that you should have someone who can be the face of the corporation? i.e. someone that can deal very well with the people side of things, motivation, culture building, actual "leading", while you take care of the administration? or are you up for the challenge of dealing with the socials (who may be very competent and so worthy of joining). because as far as I can tell, regardless of whether you would want the socials or not, your team would still have a culture, a group identity that holds it together. otherwise there's nothing stopping people from leaving to be hard-core pve-ers in a corporation that doesn't charge them 1bil.

Rifter lollers are not a common sight in 0.0 alliances because they do not contribute enough in PvP. You can play with Rifter if you like but you must be able to fly doctrine BS/BC with full t2.

A skilled PvP-er provides much more than 1B in opportunity costs but it is hard to measure because you can't monetize the effort for keeping sov and provide healthy infrastructure for the others.

If the PvE part of a 0.0 stops they will just lack ISK and can buy plex or get renters. If the PvP part stops everything will be lost. I would give at least 5:1 multiplyer in favor of PvP-er, even MORE if he is skilled because the skill must be payed with a premium.

I would point you to the ancient Sparta and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots . How valuable is one Helot vs one Spartan warrior?

i can see the merit in this post, it'l probably work as a base principle

but your gona hate being taxman, prying that isk from those pesky goblin hands every month

allthough i suppose your solution would be: if i dont receive payment by the 5th of the month you get kicked or something along those lines

and then what about even more casual players, that dont really match that number of hoursinstead they only do around 18 hours a month?they have a strong case for a reduction, or you'd have to exclude them

@NP: making friends is the worst possible idea to get anything done, because friendship is a very illiquid currency. Ergo: if you spend X effort to kiss up to the CEO of a corp, that effort worth exactly zero if he loses the CEO status. You can't just approach the successor and say "hey look how good I kissed his butt, I will do the same for you!" and expect to retain your privileges.

@Evemonkey: remember that those who paid the bill are contributed to the battle even if they refuse (or simply unable to due to lack of skillpoints) to fly with the fleet. The ISK turned into ships.

@gevlon "@Anonymous: CFC+HB is more than 25K accounts, yet in no point in the Delve conflict they fielded more than 2K pilots. So no, the average PvPer is rather casual and can be considered "Rifter loller""

have to pull you up on that one - ever see many more than 34,000 pilots on in EVE at once? not everyone plays all the time or in the same timezone. the beauty of the CFC was that even in my timezone which is during lunchtime/early afternoon weekdays for Europe/America, we could very easily field over 1000 pilots.

"CFC+HB is more than 25K accounts, yet in no point in the Delve conflict they fielded more than 2K pilots. So no, the average PvPer is rather casual"

this means that you are trying to charge for something (ratting space, market opportunities, prestige and whatnot - without having to do any pvp) that most CFC+HB corporations provide for free.

I just can't see how taxing your carebears 1b/month could go over well when the "pvp" corporation next door (which enjoys exactly the same benefits and rights as your corp) tolerates "pvp-oriented" players that have spent the last 3 months doing nothing but PvE.

Why should a pilot pay for something that he can get for free?

And I don't think you can call these corporations/alliances stupid for realizing that trying to demand a certain level of activity (in a videogame) would only result in many of their pilots (who would provide a varying but positive level of activity otherwise) leaving or going inactive due to burnout.

IIRC you yourself were quite impressed by the "no CTAs - motivation over pressure" line of thought prevailing in the CFC+HB?Why are you trying to implement the exact opposite in your own corp?

@Anonymous: the motivation works on those who already belong to a culture, therefore the available pilot count is limited. You can't motivate someone who don't share your visions.

CFC-HB corps aren't providing PvE space for free. They are fishing for PvP pilots and hope that they can catch them to get into PvP. If they fail, the corp will be kicked sooner or later. They hope that after they got someone in, they can culturally assimilate him, making them donate more time without noticing it. This works typically on young players.

Thank you, yet another person making much money in EVE thinking that every "casual gamer" can do that.

God damn. I hate it when someone comes up with the idea that something can be done by everyone.No it can't.Just because monkeys have two hands not every monkey can drive a car.

Sure in theory everyone could make Zillions of ISK in low, and they should spent all their money, so that at the end of the month they spent half of their time for, yep, exactly nothing.

PvP PvP PvP.... oh my god, there is so much more than PVP in EVE.EVE is a simulation with a lot of logistics and economics involved.Miners and producers, jf-pilots all serve to get the PvP stuff in place.And you call them carebears? That is pathetic, I am sorry, but just because someone does not shoot enemy pilots but builds your ships, so that you can do this it doesn't mean he didn't do anything.

I don't know where you get the idea from that ratting in 0.0 doesn't generate alliance/corp income, but we have between 10-20% taxes which go directly into the corp financing some of our PvP stuff, plus if more money is needed, all members go rat more, and we get more money to fund certain operations.

It certainly is an interesting approach and it will have to tackle couple of things:

- It would need the proper null-sec property. They are not all equals unfortunately. Else people might just stay in high-sec and then you wonder what is the point?

- You need a business model hard to replicate (or constantly moving).

- In general you need a solid plan or direction that would justify the contribution. That can be private (maybe better be private actually).

You also have to wonder what you get for your money by giving that much to the Alliance. Do you expect only joining fleets with them? That might be actually hard if they run large ships that take months to train ... On the other hand you give them quite large income and you would expect their help in realizing your long term plan.

What a BS! Who is even going to pay a 1 Bil/ month check just to live in Null. A few cloaky campers in your system and no pve'r is making money. Keep that cloaky in your system for a few weeks, where is he going to get his money. And don't even bother with the pvp'rs coming to the rescue. They are either out on a roam, yeah the camper saw the fleet leave, or they just get in too late while your ship is being torn up by the rats and the camper with a warp scram and webifier. PVP'rs should be able to make similar isk to what indy's do and pve'rs. BTW any pve'r should be able to participate in fleet ops, they are not all Tengu fleets going out, which by the way just might get annihilated by a naga fleet (which is not such an expensive ship ) that can be easily flown by anyone ratting.

The Goons were being hammered by Ev0ke, NC., Raiden. and PL. Their biggest allies until this point, the Northern Coalition, had collapsed, leaving a power vacuum. NC. et al decided they wanted to crush the Goons utterly, and so dropped their overwhelming Supercapital fleet into VFK, the Goon homesystem.

And the Goons stepped up. They called in their allies. They stopped dicking about on Jabber and actually logged in. They took time off work. For days, their system was camped, 23.5/7, with CFC members sat on the bubbled gates, the bubbled POSes and the surrounding systems. In the end, the ability for the Goons to motivate that many people was enough to turn an attempted headshot into a rout.

Wars aren't won by ISK. They're won by the side that can get pilots into space. The only time where ISK plays a huge role is when it comes to supercap. But even there, the bigger issues come down to build time, and actually having the Super pilots to get into them.

No amount of ISK could have saved VFK from that invasion. There are only a finite number of supercaps and supercapital ready pilots in the game, and it takes a long time to build/train more. Most supercapital producers only sell to their allies (... After this, any way. The Northern Coalition fell because they sold their supercaps to their future enemies).

What made the difference was the willingness of the CFC to sit in VFK for days at a time, and ISK just can't motivate that.

Wars are won with participation, not with isk. The most valuable resource to a nullsec alliance isn't isk, space, or moons, but people who are in fleet and fighting. Ship reimbursements are a bribe to get people in fleet.

Isk is nice to have, of course, and it does help, but an alliance can have full reimbursement and RMT 50 titans (looking at you, white noise) and still get their asses kicked if the other side has enough people joining drake fleets to push butan.

@Hivemind: not simply "donating". Finding a way how PvE/industry/trade people can meaningfully participate. Finding a place for us in null.

Currently such things are tolerated at best and only fleet PvP is accepted. And the mentioned fleets are usually the lowest common denominator: Drakes. Significant PvE contribution can bring battleship fleets back.

@ Gevlon: You can argue semantics but you're still not explaining how you go from paying a small sum of ISK into an alliance every month to shaping nullsec.

You talk about your alliance maybe being able to use battleships instead of battlecruisers, but that's going to be fairly limited; a HellCat fit runs to something like 350mil so for every recruit you get paying 1bn the Alliance can replace 3 lost BSes. It won't go far in a major war.

Even if your contribution does affect alliance doctrine, how is that your members reshaping nullsec? I assume you have some broader goal in mind than allowing PvPers to fly Abaddons instead of Drakes.

Maybe I am being too deconstructionist, but to a PvE player, what is the point of reshaping nullsec? Gevlon, you are already raking in billions per month without setting foot into nullsec. What is the point of going through all this trouble, just to get maybe a little bit more income?

Really, I fail to see how your plan is really any sort of novel process. There are generally already industrially focused corps in most major alliances. Major market hubs like VFK-IV generally want for very little that can be produced in empire as those same things generally are or can be produced in sov space for a lower cost than those in empire already.

False, the most successful 0.0 alliances embrace new players (Test and Goons). A well equipped T2 battleship takes MONTHS of training and costs you about 400M ISK. A Rifter takes 16 hours and 500 000 ISK. A Drake takes about a month and 80M ISK. Cheaper, lower skill doctrines are much more successful. You can have way higher numbers and way more DPS in a fleet.

I will only stop at Drakes vs Battleships so you can understand where you are wrong.

You probaly can't fly a Drake, nd if you can, I am 100% sure you never did it in a Fleet or gang of any form of PvP.

In theory, a Battleship should be able to perform better than a BC.But if you go DEEPER, you will see that it is NOT applied to Drakes.

A Drake in a fleet with scimitara BEATS an Abaddon in a fleet with guardians, fighting at 50 km range.

If you cannot understand or accept this, I will try to explain why.both Drakes and Abaddons have 5% / lvl armor or shield resist.Drakes have 5 out of the 6 midslots fitted for TANK and 2/4 lows fitted for damage (CFC MWD perma run Drake).A Abaddon have 7 low slots.In order to have a tank comparable to a Drake, it needs to use 1 low slot for 1600 armor plate 2 for EANM's and one DCU.The 3 left low slots MUST be filled with at least ONE tracking enhancer and 2 for dps mods.

Now, if you want the Abaddon to be BETTER tanked, it is possible BUT the dps will drop UNDER Drake dps.

AAnother thing...the Abbadons are BIG and SLOW, and Drakes missiles will inflict 100% damage, while the Abbadons, due to low tracking, will do around 70% of their DPS.

Another difference that IS HUGE when in fleets, is that Shield reps are INSTANT while armor reps are DELAYED to 10 or 8 or 7 seconds, depends on armor repair, rigs, skills and implants.

First thing that gows down must be the logis...and ANY damage outside insta pop done to a scimi can be repped, while a guardian can get 2 hits before reps.

And since you are good at math and like profits : do you prefer 100 Abbadons or 300 Drakes? Because a Drake is 3 times cheaper AND have better DPS if Abaddons are fitted for tank OR almost same DPS if Abaddons are fitted to damage.

As i worte before .. don't look at 0.0 space .. look at wormhole space ... this is a interessting oportunity ... grab a hole set up a pos on every spot build your subcaps etc in the system rat the sleepers make pi and profit .. wormholes are one of the most valuable space .. and you need just a small number of pilots to hold it .. most wormhole groups also are much more focused on the isk/hour thing .. and you dont need that much strong fleet because of the wormhole restrictions ... so 30 pilots are a force ....

Like you said, W-space requires pilots. Pilots need a place to store their crap. W-space doesn't have stations, so a corp lives out of the a POS. POS life requires trust. Trust requires friendship. Gevlon's brand of objectivism view's friendship as "too illiquid" to consider. Ergo, no W-space.

Further, W-space requires actually enjoying the "flying in space" part of the game. Gevlon stole The Mittani's (uncredited, tisk tisk) joke in a comment on last Friday's post about "who actually likes playing EVE?"

IMO Gevlon is looking to create the ultimate solo-corp... take the "Multiplayer" out of MMO.

Like reality television, reading this blog is a guilty pleasure. Keep it up, Gevlon; keep keeping the sandbox crazy!

Wormhole space is not that safe, and we take a particularly dim view of anyone moving into w-space with pure profit on their mind. Wormhole space is a choice to live in the wilderness, not a choice to make profit, and anyone coming into that space with a goal purely to make ISK and not PvP has been sent packing.

"Now, if you want the Abaddon to be BETTER tanked, it is possible BUT the dps will drop UNDER Drake dps."

their tank is roughly equal - the abaddon has a little more buffer (which is useful as reps catch later) but the resistances are pretty the same.

oh wait, but I didn't use your special snowflake abaddon setup:

"it needs to use 1 low slot for 1600 armor plate 2 for EANM's and one DCU.The 3 left low slots MUST be filled with at least ONE tracking enhancer and 2 for dps mods"

that setup is bad - maybe it is designed to be flown by equally bad pilots who cannot be expected to press an overheat button when primaried or to change scripts in their tracking computers as appropriate but otherwise I don't see the point of it.

hellcats have roughly 2x the damage of Drakes at roughly similar resistances - they are not a doctrine I would prefer to fight MWD Drakes in but with enough webs and good warpins they will do the job just fine.

"A Drake in a fleet with scimitara BEATS an Abaddon in a fleet with guardians, fighting at 50 km range."this statement is flat out wrong and a Drake fleet engaging Abaddons at 50km would suffer from having a retarded FC - the Drakes have to kite at ~70km if they want to stand a chance (and the armor fleet will try to deny them that).

Especially in a Drake vs Abaddon setup the "Guardian reps hit at the end of the cycle" issue is completely off-set by the travel time of the Drake's missiles. The Abaddons are capable of significantly higher volley damage (2474 vs 3757 in my example) without that additional 10-15s of warning after redboxing - they would tear your Drakes to shreds at 50km.

To win a fight with hellcats drakes must use their vastly superior mobility to string out the enemy fleet and attempt to pick off small chunks at a time. Also, drakes are really used in a combined arms fashion backed up by a gang of alpha mealstroms and bombers. You use the drakes as cannon fodder to keep the hellcats pinned and busy and your maelstroms can then pick a spot 90km away and just volley away. Also, since abaddons are about as mobile as a house, a single good multi-wave bombing run will be devastating.

Couple things. First, not sure where you are getting your numbers based on that balance sheet. I see that TEST is paying about 0.2T/month, but nowhere does it list their income.

Something I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned are the taxes in many 0.0 corps. Sure, it doesn't really come to 1b/pilot, but even PvP pilots tend to rat to make isk out in 0.0. The taxes also apply to all the people that just go to 0.0 to rat. I think your idea about 1b/member is interesting, but not practical. As some others have said before, alliances will take you without the 1b/person, so why would you do it that way?